Kurkistan

Thanks. Perhaps the "Strength" stored from Allomantic pewter is fundamentally different from normal Strenght? So someone who tapped a pewtermind only filled by a Thug tapping Pewter might not get bulge-muscled.

*Looks up expression. Laughs evilly* Does this generally mean, that everybody is invested? Or does it mean that "some people" are invested? And now I'm too tired to try to catch my thoughts and put them together to a posting. Too, because my thoughts may be redundant or obsolete when somebody enlightened me for my questions. Sleep well! :-) I think he means "magic system" by systems, and "people" is understood as "people who get magic." Remember that this is a somewhat incomprehensible paraphrasing from memory, so I wouldn't get caught up on odd turns of phrase.

On the other questions: 1. Almost certainly. Divine Breaths are Splinters of Endowment, who has only finite amounts of power to distribute at any one time. It's almost certainly an absurdly high threshold, though. 2. The Royal family somehow passes around a sliver of a Divine Breath from the first Returned, likely through Cognitive interactions with inheritance, which gives them the Locks. As far as I know, it's just a weird, limited, oddly expressed, and more fluctuating version of the full-body makeovers full Returned are capable of. So it flows more from a special expression of the Divine Breath than from a simple excess of BioChromatic power. 4. No idea. Since Lifeless aren't properly sentient, extra Breaths may just sit in them like Vivienne's Breaths stuck to her shawl, not really interacting with the Lifeless, but just being deposited on its body for awhile. 5. Similar to that, but probably working from the other direction. Soulstamps change the Spiritual aspect within the bounds allowed by the Cognitive, while Returneds' ability to change their forms seems based on a Cognitive "how you see yourself," with maybe a bit of Spiritual "what should X look like?" thrown in.

I can't find the WoB for the life of me. Do you have a link? It may be the case that Brandon says that Allomantic pewter "allows you to store more Strength," but he's just being sneaky and thinking along the lines that Inkthinker laid out.

I'm going to psuedo-side-with Meg on this one, but not really . I think "what some one [sic] has done" is probably speaking more towards how one behaves and intends to behave than a simple "perform act A, get power B." So Kaladin behaves in accordance with the ideals of the Windrunners, so he attracts and bonds with Syl. Kaladin swears to behave even more in accordance with those ideals (while in the process of acting on that oath), and gets more power. This is similar to my theory that Kaladin the murder-cult leader wouldn't have attracted Syl: it's the kind of person he is as well as his end actions; but you still need both. Once again, Aristotle would be pleased with Brandon, if I'm right. Alternatively, it could be the case that Kaladin just needed to act a certain way in order to attract Syl, and then the rules change, like Elantrians getting Elantrified by the Shaod for (presumably) being devoted to something, and then having to use a completely different mechanism (learning and writing Aons) to go any further. Your welcome. Skulking ftw! Interesting approach. I drew on this a bit for my "alternate" model above, though I'm not particularly enthralled by it. The examples you cite seem to just be learning how to shoot web, which everyone in all the magic systems seems to do the same way: a combination of trial and error, learning from another source, and instinct. Kaladin's oath makes him better at using his magic system, but doesn't really have anything to do with him learning how to use it--much like Vin's spike, actually. What is your "really all?" parenthetical referencing?

I honestly cannot recall if this has been settled yet, so feel free to slap me down, but I remember discussions about whether it is decisions or actions that attract spren/bring about magical ability on Roshar. As a result of skulking over on the WoT boards (don't ask why), I found this little gem: "[brandon] talked about the link between his magic systems. One of the core principles is 'investing'. In l lot of his systems people are trough some mechanism invested with magic powers. In Elantris trough the Shaod, In mistborn it's genetic, in tWoK it depends on what some one has done." So it is actions, not just decisions or intentions, that take the day. Aristotle would approve. This does leave open the possibility that the actions have to be taken for the right reasons (netting maximum Aristotelian approval points), though. Personally, I think that you do have to act for the right reasons. Kaladin protecting young soldiers so that he can start a murder-cult probably wouldn't have attracted Syl. Discuss.

Why thank you, I do try. Your trip sounds a bit hellacious, to be honest. Can I take the story as a whole as a "bring a tent and space-heater next time" PSA?

"The owner of this book may have a two metal Allomancer!"

The oddness of surges seems pretty well defined, as far as I can tell. The Basic Lashing takes advantage of the Spiritual nature of connections between everything, of which gravity is only another connection, to be manipulated in the Spiritual Realm. All the forces, then (atomic/molecular bonds, gravity, etc.), likely rest in the Spiritual Realm. They are the same connections as in the real world, but can be manipulated separately from their Physical trappings. I'm not sure what this entails for Iron Ferrings, but it's a good thing to keep in mind going forward.

What I read:

There wasn't a really appropriate board for this, so I just picked the one that seemed best. :)/> Am I alone in being relieved that Brandon is finally done with WoT? Not in the "wow, the series is finally done, hurrah!" sense, at least not purely, but in the "now he can finally start writing his own stuff again" sense? Don't get me wrong: I'm glad that Brandon took on WoT. He finished the series right and--incidentally--in so doing boosted his reputation to levels that would have taken at least a few more years for him to build from scratch. The experience is also the reason why he now has the expertise to write the Stormlight books properly. But Brandon has been pouring his soul into this for five years, and you can tell that it's worn on him, as well as taking considerable time away from his own works. I'm glad that he can finally step away from the self-described duty of writing WoT and do his own stuff again without worrying about pleasing someone else's fan-base or properly mimicking Jordan's voice and characters. This is true on both a selfish "Me want BOOKS!" level and on the level of being happy for Brandon as he finally passes the burden back onto Atlas' shoulders. Sorry for spilling this out, it just seems that now is the time for saying deep and meaningful things about the meaning of stuff, what with all the testimonials coming out about the importance of The Wheel of Time; I thought it fitting to register my appreciation for Brandon and my happiness that he can finally lay WoT to rest.

^That looks more like a special dispensation than a Cosmere-wide truth, but good for you, I suppose.

Yes, Feruchemy is a big reveal. Good work there Lamguin. It's kind of odd, though, since Hoid would presumably have burned an alloy of Atium and Lerasium to become a Feruchemist. That's all fine and dandy, but it leaves him with at least 4 timely appearances that happened before he could become a Feruchemist (Elantris, TES, first two Mistborn books). Unless he got a spike or raided the Well of Ascension way back the first time it was used? As for what Feruchemical power he could use, the most likely (known) power is Chromium (luck), since we know from the RPG that it works on a fairly cosmic level. Depending on how exactly Luck functions, he could just be surging massive amounts and throwing darts at a "map" to find out where/when to go next. On a less theoretical level, it's possible to read "[p]art of it that will show up in later books" as Hoid using Feruchemy in an SA book, since Brandon is usually a bit hesitant to reveal details about books that aren't even on the horizon yet, ala his (way future) planned Cosmere book. So, on the level of pure Awesome, we may see Hoid Hulk-out or float like a butterfly or something else Feruchemically awesome (astounding audiences everywhere on Roshar) relatively soon.

^Ah, okay. Sorry for misreading you. You may continue about your day, citizen.

Not quite, actually. You can't fix chronic problems (ageing, for instance), but it's all about Healing back to the "form of yourself." So a Bloodmaker who happens to have a cold at the moment will be able to cure himself, but not if he suffers from "Coldnestimy" and always has a cold. It's not limited to just trauma. You may have had this in mind already. In that case, sorry for my incorrect interpretation.

And so I regret to report failure. I got bogged down by life/the growing slowness present in book 9, which I am currently halfway through.

^Sorry, but you must have missed the relevant paragraph. In that very chapter (19), he tries and fails to summon his Shardblade. "Instinctively, he held his hand out to summon his Shardblade, but nothing happened. It would never come during his visions" (pg 296). P.S. Your English is fine. A few odd turns of phrase here and there, but perfectly readable.

^Good idea.

Thanks for the offer. Here're some of my old-faithful questions: -Is Denth technically the king of Idris, or is he an offshoot that happened to keep the Royal Locks for some reason? -Why does The Lord Ruler spend time as an old man, if he can just compound (previously compounded) Age instead? -Are Conjoiner fabrials sensitive enough that pairs of them attached to taught membranes could work as telephones? -Is it the case that only native Scadrialians can use Hemalurgy to "spike" attributes out of their victims? -Does the Blessing of Presence help a Kandra against takeover by emotional Allomancy, or only against Ruin? EDIT: Are Breaths "normal" parts of Nalthians (common to all humans in the Cosmere) which the magic system allows to be split off, or are they tacked on extra bits courtesy of Endowment, like the extra Preservation in Scadralians?

Speaking as a non-jeweler, there is a large chance that Brandon doesn't actually know the nitty-gritty of gem composition. If it truly is just absurd for rubies and sapphires to be treated differently, you might want to Tweet Brandon or PM Peter or something, to see to it that some reference to "real" rubies be made if the characters ever get into studying the composition of stormlight-holding gems. Regardless, thanks for the information . Always good to learn something new.

The most important words is a literary reference to The Way of Kings (in world), the impelling document for the Knights Radiant (pg 227). We don't know what the actual words are, but I think people have been operating under the assumption that it has to do with the Ideals of the Knights Radiant, perhaps just the First Ideal "Life before death, strength before weakness, journey before destination." That's an excellent question about Shardblades. Perhaps Dalinar actually does summon his Shardblade, in the real world, but Adolin or someone else knocks it out of his hand as it forms (crazy man with Shardblade != Good)? Or Honor set the dreams up to disrupt the connection between the spiritweb of the dreamer and a Shardblade? Shardblades probably aren't wholly contained within the spiritweb's of their holders--instead, they probably rest in the Spiritual Realm as unique entities with a connection to their holder through that holder's spiritweb.

You'd have to be careful with it, since soulcasting probably relies on aggregated Cognitive aspects (i.e. the wall is a wall, not a collection of stones), so any ceiling which was whole for a reasonable period of time could be soulcast all at the same time. I suppose successive plates, dropping very quickly one after the other, might work, not giving the target time to recover.

I doubt it, since I think we're pretty much agreed that people hold stormlight more tightly--or at least differently--than gems do; otherwise you'd have dueling Surgebinders stealing stormlight from each other's body.

I don't have my copy or an ebook, but I thought it was mentioned in the Galinar assassination sequence.

Oops, didn't check message: on a phone. "As a function of the speed"